Last week was a really bad one for Jeb? Bush, and it appears to be spilling over into this week as well.
Perhaps because he got big cheers preaching to the choir in the debate at the Reagan Library when he claimed that "My brother kept us safe," he went on to use it again on the campaign trail, where people live in a reality based world and don't pray to the fictionalized St. Ronnie. It didn't go well.
Then Jeb's revisionist history hit another wall: Donald Trump, who pointed out that his brother didn't keep us safe, that 9-11 happened on his watch. Jeb? took issue with that, and the two of them battled it out on Twitter, not like Presidential candidates, but like petulant children.
Still, Jeb? didn't give up. On Sunday he took his narrative to the airwaves again, and not only did it not go well for him, but he undermined his entire party over their Hillary Clinton BenghaziMail "investigation" at the same time in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper:
“My brother responded to a crisis and united the country, he organized our country and he kept us safe,” the GOP hopeful told Tapper. “And there’s no denying that. And the great majority of Americans believe that. And I don’t know why he keeps bringing this up.”
Tapper wondered if Bush’s loyalty to his brother “might be in some ways a political or policy liability blinding you to mistakes he made.”
“It’s what you do after that matters,” Bush insisted. “Does anybody actually blame my brother for the attacks on 9/11? If they do, they’re totally marginalized in our society. It’s what he did afterwards that mattered, and I’m proud of him. And so are a bunch of other people.”
It's what you do afterwards that matters. Like lying us into a war with the country that had nothing to do with 9-11, leading to the needless deaths of more than were lost in 9-11? Wow, that's some safety record there, Jeb?
“Obviously al Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11,” the CNN host pressed. “But how do you respond to critics who ask if your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?”
Bush stammered in response: “Well, I — the question on Benghazi, which we will now finally get the truth to, is was the place secure? They had a responsibility at the Department of State to have proper security.”
“And how was the response in the aftermath of the attack?” he continued. “Was there a chance that these four American lives could have been saved? That’s what the investigation is about, it’s not a political issue… Were we doing the job of protecting our embassies and our consulates, and during the period, those hours after the attacks started, could they have been saved?”
As has been pointed out by many, including yours truly, George W. Bush not only ignored warnings, but he hardly prepared the country against the 9-11 attacks, with air defense fighter planes at only seven alert sites:
For months after the attacks, the U.S. had 26 interceptor alert sites.
Tapper continued:
“That’s kind of proving the point of the critics,” Tapper noted. “You don’t want your brother to bear responsibility for 9/11 — and I understand that argument and al Qaeda is responsible — but why are the terrorists not the ones that are responsible for these attacks in Libya?”
“They are!” Bush replied. “But if the ambassador was asking for additional security and they didn’t get it, that’s a proper point. And if it’s proven that the security was adequate compared to other embassies, then fine, we’ll move on.”
Other pesky facts, there were plenty of attacks on embassies on George W. Bush's watch, and after millions of taxpayer dollars wasted and several investigations of Benghazi, he and the GOP refuse to move on. Instead, they've doubled down, even selectively leaking information and selectively editing documents to make Hillary Clinton look guilty. But I digress.
Perhaps because he hadn't put his foot in his mouth enough last week, Jeb? is now into week two of "let's blame someone else for my brother's disasters," and he's jumping to another chapter of the Bush family fantasy history book:
In the interview with Jeb Bush on Monday, Hannity repeated a widely debunked claim from his 2002 book that the Sudanese had “offered [Osama] bin Laden on a silver platter” and suggested that Clinton should have imprisoned the terrorist merely for his desire to commit future crimes.
Here, Jeb? is implying that Bill Clinton didn't go after OBL aggressively enough, which is not only untrue, but pretty amazing, considering that George W. Bush actually said of OBL on video here, “I don’t know where [OBL] is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.” Bush was warned several times about OBL by not only Clinton, but the CIA, but Dubya was more concerned with vacationing and reading My Pet Goat than he was about terror threats. It took President Obama to get OBL, anther page no doubt ripped from the Jeb? history book.
Even if you ignore his shameless rewrite of history concerning his brother and 9-11, where history begins and ends where Jeb? decides it begins and ends, Jeb? can't even remember his own history either. Here's another blunder from last week when Jeb? brought up the second Space Shuttle disaster in a stump speech:
"I was thinking, you were going to bring up the tragedy that took place, I will never forget that, when I went as governor of Florida, to the tarmac for a tribute to the astronauts, that died. I think it was 2005, maybe — um , yeah. (audience: Christa McAuliffe?”) No, the other one, 2002. In the 2000s. It was horrible, It’s a reminder that this is a dangerous endeavor, but it is worth us, for all sorts of reasons, to be engaged in it."
A tragedy that happened during his time as governor, in his own state, that he "will never forget," except that he has forgotten it. How hard could it have been to look up the date beforehand if he was going to bring this up in the first place?
Jeb? "Stuff Happens" Bush is not only shameless about American lives lost and who's to blame for it, he's just a bad candidate and would make just as bad a President as his brother was, if not worse.
He's also driving his mother's point home, when she said we didn't need another Bush in the White House.
For once in my life, I agree with her.
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